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FAQ

Okay, I'm going to add to this page every time something comes up I think might be interesting, especially for new players.

1. Mesh clothes don't fit me, is there anything I can do?

I wrote a detailed tutorial on how to fit Mesh clothes. It was published on my Mix 'n' Mesh blog. Click here to read it. And let me tell you something: If you have a modifiable shape you can wear any well-made Mesh clothes and it's not complicated at all!

2. What's a SOM? How do I use it?

A SOM (short for Subscribe-O-Matic) is a SL advertising service through which designers inform the members of their update groups about new products, special events and sales offers. It is also often used to send small gifts (i.e. freebies) to the members of the update groups.

Advantage: You can join as many of these SOM update groups as you like since they will not take away from the max. 25 inworld groups you can join at a given time.

- To become a member you must click the SOM display once and will get a confirmatory message in chat.
- To receive the gift we talk about in a post you have to click the SOM display a second time after joining. Then a menu will pop up listing several options like Unsubscribe and History.
- Click on history to get a second menu listing the max. 10 last messages sent to the update group.
- Then click on any of the buttons # 1 to # 10 to get that old message (including a possible attached gift) resent to you (if the owner allows this). As it's sometimes difficult to see which message includes the gift, start with # 1 and work your way down as # 1 is the newest message!
- Obviously, we make sure that a resending of the gift is possible at least on the day of blogging but we cannot guarantee that it will be available longer. Rest assured, most of the time it will be, at least for a little while.

3. How To Take Square Size Pictures

Due to the fact
that inworld pictures downloaded from SL to a hard disk drive will
always have a square format (i.e. 1024 x 1024), rectangular pictures,
especially ones taken on a widescreen monitor, will be heavily
distorted.

If you want to avoid that and take perfectly square pictures you should change your settings the following way:

- click on Snapshot to make the little Snapshot Preview Window open

- click on "More" so that you can see the complete menu (if you only see the option "Less" you are ok)

- check "Keep open after saving"

- check "Auto-refresh"

- click the drop down menu under Size and choose "Custom"

- uncheck the box "Constrain Proportions"

- change the width to the same pixel size as the height

-
click save and you will see how the "active part" of your picture
preview, the part that you will see on your picture, gets reduced to a
square. The "greyed out" part left and right will no longer show up on
your pictures.

PS: If you want to save pictures you take in SL on your hard drive (instead of for 10 L$ each in your
inventory), you have three format options: PNG, BMP and JPEG (which is
the same as JPG). If you just want to keep snapshots without further
editing them in a program like Photoshop or Gimp, use the JPEG Format.
This is also the Format you want should you decide to upload a picture
back into SL. Plus, it will also help you save on hard disk space.

On the other hand, if you plan on post-editing your SL pictures we recommend you chose the "BMP" Format. This will allow you to upkeep the highest quality level during the whole post-editing process. Only when you are completely done with your post-editing, should you convert your pictures into the "JPG"/"JPEG" Format.